Guest Author Josh Traynere on Solar Roadways

In the Netherlands, the world’s first solar bike path is being built. Although the path itself is only 230 feet long, it can power 3 Dutch homes. Because the solar roads cannot tilt to effectively maximize their output, they receive their benefits of practicality from being able to not require large plots of land and being able to be placed in heavy populated urban areas. The planned path is expected to have over 2000 bikers a day.

The United States on the other hand had an indiegogo campaign earlier in the year to develop solar road panels to be used in numerous ways such as generating clean energy, snow/ice free, impervious to potholes, and significantly lower greenhouse gases. The plan for the solar roadways is to be used as parking lots, roads, playground, and virtually everything under the sun.

Hopefully, we will see more use of the solar road panels in the upcoming future.